The Flat Hunt

Well, I'm here. After a six-hour overnight flight (during which I didn't sleep), we landed at Heathrow around 6:45 a.m. and took a bus to our hotel, where we dropped off our luggage, and made our way down the street to the London Center for our first-day orientation. During one of the sections, we took a tour of the area around the ICLC--it's too bad they didn't tell us we were going outside beforehand. Because it was, of course, raining. And I had no jacket or umbrella. Fantastic.

So here I am, hair a complete disaster, wet and cold, and we all have to find flats. Yes. We didn't have housing before we got here. So, bedraggled and exhausted (remember, we didn't sleep), four of my friends and I are trekking around the city after making appointments. We stupidly scheduled them close together and far away from each other. Our first appointment was at 3, but the guy who was showing us the place had another showing with a different (and late) group of IC students. We had an appointment at 3:45 quite a distance from where we were, and to top it all off he showed us an apartment he KNEW was too small for five people, wasting our time. And thus making us have to literally RUN to our next appointment--run to the tube, run from the station, down streets and across them at the risk of our own lives (pedestrians do not have the right of way here and the cars will not stop for anything). We did make it, looked at the place, and told the guy we'd get back to him.

Then we decided to take a different route back.

If you are ever in London, don't go to the Kensington/Olympia station. It's the end of the line, and apparently there are a lot of delays. Well. We ended up missing our next appointment at 5, after the train we were on had to be canceled due to someone getting sick or something.

In the end, we did end up getting that apartment we ran to. So we are all set, after a day of wet and cold and exhaustion from no sleep and more physical activity than at least I am used to.